Death in the Stacks Read online

  “Want to talk it over at dinner tonight?” he asked.

  “Sounds like a plan,” she agreed.

  He planted one more kiss on her and then left, closing the door softly behind him. Lindsey watched him wave at Beth and the other staff members as he made his way out of the building. She was going to live with him. Despite all of the stress and confusion of the past few days, she felt a bubble of happy float up inside of her.

  It was really nice to have something to look forward to, especially if this investigation went wrong and she found herself or Paula in jail for a crime neither of them had committed.

  She glanced out of her office window at Paula. Now that she had a future she desperately wanted to hang on to, it seemed even more imperative that they find the real killer, meaning she couldn’t dodge it anymore. She had to demand answers.

  Paula was going to have to explain about the letter of resignation, the lie she told about where she was right before they searched for Olive, in addition to a comment she made that Lindsey hadn’t been able to let go of. Paula was going to have to come clean and tell her everything. There was simply too much at stake.

  Lindsey walked out to the circulation desk, and when Paula glanced up, she smiled and said, “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

  Paula’s face was instantly wary, but she nodded and followed Lindsey into her office. Lindsey shut the door and gestured for Paula to take a seat while Lindsey sat on the edge of her desk. Paula clasped her hands in her lap as if to keep herself from fidgeting or maybe because she just needed something to hang on to and the only reliable thing she could find was herself. That broke Lindsey’s heart just a little bit.

  “Don’t look worried,” Lindsey said. “I just need to be clear on some things.”

  Paula stared at her. Her eyes were huge, as if trying to track an incoming hit.

  “When you handed me your resignation, you said, ‘I won’t let it happen again.’ What did you mean?”

  Paula unclenched her hands and ran them up and down her thighs. She blew out a breath and turned her head away. Lindsey waited. She didn’t want to pressure Paula, but if she was going to help her, she needed to know everything.

  “When I was fourteen, I was . . .” She paused and took a breath. She held it for a few seconds and then blew it out as if it could pull the words loose. She continued on the same breath, “I was attacked by my stepbrother. He tried to . . . I fought him off . . . but he was too strong . . . he chased me into the kitchen and the only weapon I could find to defend myself was a knife. I stabbed him in the shoulder. No one believed me . . . that he tried to hurt me.”

  Her voice broke, and a shiver ran from the top of her head all the way through her body. Lindsey didn’t say a word. She held her breath and waited.

  “Not even my mother.”

  “Oh, Paula.” Lindsey felt her insides clench tight.

  “Yeah, my mother didn’t want to give up her new husband, and my stepfather refused to believe that his son . . . Well . . . long story short, I was sent away to live in a foster situation.”

  “Did you go to jail?”

  “No, the state argued to lock me up for two years, but the judge—I think she believed me—put me on probation for three years, and I had to do community service and go for a psych eval,” she said. “My foster family was strict, but at least I was safe. I don’t want to go through that misery all over. That’s what I meant. I don’t want to have people not believe me—not again.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Lindsey moved and sat in the chair beside her. She wanted to hug her. She wanted to give her the love her own mother should have given her, but this was a work environment, so instead, she put her hand on Paula’s shoulder and gave it a bracing squeeze. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “I didn’t want anyone to know,” Paula said. “Ever.”

  “But somehow Olive Boyle found out,” Lindsey said. “Is this what she was talking about at the dinner when she referred to you as a violent criminal?”

  “Probably,” Paula said. “It’s the only time I’ve ever been in any sort of trouble. I didn’t kill my stepbrother, but I did hurt him pretty badly. It was self-defense.”

  “I hope you hurt him badly enough that he never tried to victimize another person ever again,” Lindsey said. “That was very brave of fourteen-year-old you.”

  Paula glanced down at her hands. “Thanks.”

  “Now I hate to ask, but I need to know where you were right before we all went looking for Olive,” Lindsey said.

  Paula’s eyes went wide again, and she paled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You weren’t picking up the circulation desk like you told Emma and me, were you?”

  Paula hung her head. “No.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Hiding.”

  Lindsey felt her heart beat hard in her chest. Oh no, was this the moment that Paula confessed? Lindsey had been so sure she was innocent.

  “I walked Hannah out to her car, because she had to leave early, and when I came back, I heard Olive calling my name,” Paula said. “I was afraid. I didn’t know what she was going to say or do, so I thought if I hid, then she’d give up and go away.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I was in the storage closet at the back of the building. I waited until I thought she was gone. When I came out, well, I cut through the fiction area and that’s when I found her.”

  Lindsey let out a shaky breath. Paula hadn’t even known they’d been looking for Olive. What a shock that must have been.

  “It’s okay,” Lindsey said. The lie held as much substance as dandelion fluff, and Paula clearly wasn’t buying it.

  “No, it’s not.” Paula’s face crumpled with anguish. “Don’t you see? If I hadn’t hid from her, she wouldn’t be dead. Whoever killed her only got her alone because she was searching for me and I hid.”

  Paula dropped her head into her hands and sobbed. This time, Lindsey didn’t hesitate. She hugged Paula close and let her cry it out all over her shoulder. To carry such a load of guilt. It wasn’t fair—not when Paula had suffered so much.

  “Is that why you lied about where you were?” Lindsey snagged a tissue from the box on her desk and handed it to Paula.

  “Yes, I didn’t want everyone to know it was my fault,” she said. She took the tissue and dabbed her nose and eyes. “If I hadn’t been such a coward . . .”

  “No, if Olive hadn’t been such a bully, you wouldn’t have run away from her. This is not your fault. Listen, we’re going to figure this out,” Lindsey said. “I don’t want you to worry. You’re not alone this time, and you have people who believe you. I promise.”

  • • •

  Lindsey spent the rest of the afternoon going over Robbie’s list of suspects. Given the situation, she called an emergency meeting of the library board for the following afternoon. To her relief, everyone agreed to make time in their schedule to attend.

  Next, she left her office to go find Milton. The library was Milton’s home away from home, and not just because he’d been on the board, held a chess club there, or because his current ladylove, Ms. Cole, worked there. No, he had always been a fixture in the library, doing his yoga quietly in a corner. He brought a certain Zen to the place that Lindsey had never appreciated more than now.

  His favorite spot to practice yoga was in one of the corners of the building where the floor space was clear and the tall windows looked out on the town park and the ocean beyond. Lindsey strode past the shelves toward that space. To her surprise, when she found Milton, he wasn’t alone.

  “Do you think that’s healthy, all that blood rushing to his head?”

  “Search me, but if he can do it, so can I.”

  “Marty, don’t—”

  “Don’t worry, I got this.”

  Lindsey stepped into the clea
red space to see an older, bald gentleman and a young man with a floppy head of black hair standing a few feet away from Milton, who was in the midst of a meditative inversion known as sirsasana, or a headstand to non-yogis.

  “Hey, Oz, grab my feet,” the bald man said.

  “Aw, man, do I have to?”

  Before Lindsey could stop him, the old guy bent over and put his hands on the ground. Then he kicked up his heels in the young man’s direction. Caught off guard, the young man took a heel to the chin and went down with a grunt. The old guy fell on top of him, and the two of them landed in a tangle of arms and legs and swear words.

  “Oh!” Lindsey cried. “Are you all right?”

  She desperately did not want to have to fill out an incident report given that her last one had been about a murder. She could happily wait several more years before having to turn in another.

  “Hey, I found them!” Mel, the cupcake baker from Arizona, called to Angie, her dark-haired friend, as the two women joined Lindsey by the windows. “Marty, Oz, what are you doing?”

  “Getting kicked in the face by our guru here,” Oz said. He shook his shaggy head.

  “Hey, if you had caught my feet, I’d be all Zen right now like that guy,” Marty groused. “You harshed my mellow.”

  “Dude,” Oz said. The one syllable carried an entire rebuke.

  Lindsey glanced at Mel and Angie. They were clearly trying not to laugh and failing miserably.

  “Are they always like this?” Lindsey asked.

  “Yes,” the two women said together.

  Marty brushed himself off and reached out a hand to pull up Oz. “Better question, is he always like this?” He pointed to Milton, and Lindsey nodded.

  “Hey, we heard that the woman who spoke at the dinner the other night was murdered here in the library. Is that true?” Angie asked.

  “I’m afraid so,” Lindsey said.

  All four of the bakery people stepped away from her. Lindsey raised her eyebrows in surprise.

  “Sorry, it’s nothing personal,” Mel said. “But not our circus, not our monkeys.”

  With that the group of bakers scuttled out of the library, leaving Lindsey puzzling after them. But really, she couldn’t blame them. How often did cupcake bakers come up close and personal with murder? Probably never.

  She approached Milton, who had not even cracked an eyelid during her exchange with the bakers, and crouched down beside him. If he was in some deep transcendental meditation, she didn’t want to interrupt him. She settled in to wait, sitting with her legs folded to the side to accommodate her skirt. She pulled her phone out of her pocket to check her messages.

  “Are they gone yet?”

  “Ah!” Lindsey jumped and glanced at Milton to see his eyes open as he regarded her. “Yes, they’re gone.”

  Milton took in a deep breath, and then as he exhaled, he moved out of his inversion until he was sitting on the ground beside Lindsey.

  “I thought that old guy was going to do himself an injury,” he said. He didn’t acknowledge that the “old guy” was likely the same age as he was, and Lindsey opted not to mention it either.

  “Me, too,” she said. Then she laughed. “Good thing he managed to land on the young one.”

  Milton smiled. He gazed at her for a moment and then said, “But that’s not why you’re here.”

  “No.”

  “Is this about Olive Boyle?”

  Lindsey nodded. She wasn’t sure how to ask what she had in mind, but she had to clear Milton from Robbie’s list for her own peace of mind if nothing else. She considered Milton her friend. She was going to go for blunt and hope he forgave her the harshness of the question.

  “So, Milton, did you by any chance murder Olive Boyle?” she asked.

  15

  “What?!” Milton cried. “Lindsey, I’m shocked. How can you even think that?”

  “I don’t,” Lindsey said. “I’m just crossing you off the list of people who had an issue with Olive.”

  “What list?” he asked.

  “The one Robbie made up,” she said.

  “And he put me on it?” Milton sounded outraged. “He knows I’m a pacifist.”

  “I’m on the list, too,” Lindsey said. “If that helps at all.”

  Milton’s shoulders dropped, and he ran a hand over his neatly trimmed silver goatee. “Actually, it does.”

  “I don’t believe that you hurt Olive,” Lindsey said. “Not at all, but Robbie spoke with Lydia Wilcox, and she suspects that Olive manipulated the rest of the board into voting for her.”

  Milton glanced away. It hit Lindsey then that she wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know.

  “You knew?”

  “They came to see me,” he said. “Olive did blackmail them. That’s what she does . . . er . . . did.”

  “Over the library board presidency?” Lindsey asked. “But it’s such a nothing job. Oh, sorry, that came out wrong.”

  Milton shrugged. “Don’t be. I had the same thought myself. But it turns out Olive had bigger plans. She told the library board members who did vote for her that she would remember their loyalty when she won the job of mayor next year.”

  “Wow, so it was true. She was planning a mayoral run.” Lindsey blinked. She could not imagine the rich, spoiled, petulant Olive Boyle as mayor. She’d set their little town back fifty years at least.

  “She just wanted to get on some of the local boards to prove her leadership before she went for the big job,” Milton said. “I suspect she unconsciously felt that being mayor would sate her need for power, and she was willing to do whatever it took to get there. How’s that for scary?”

  “It’s terrifying,” Lindsey said.

  “Agreed.”

  “Well, that’s a game changer,” she said. “And my list of suspects just got longer.”

  “And it includes the mayor,” Milton said.

  “Do we know if he knew about her plans?” she asked. “When I talked to Mayor Hensen at the dinner, he was still trying to keep out of her sights.”

  “Rumor has it, she threatened the mayor and his right-hand man, Herb Gunderson, in a private meeting they were having about taking down the fencing in front of her McMansion and opening the beach to the public,” Milton said. “I believe she called Mayor Hensen a waste of space and vowed to take his job. Whether he took her seriously or not, I don’t know.”

  “Either way, it had to be awkward.”

  “To say the least.”

  “How many people know about that meeting?”

  “As of right now, probably the whole town.”

  “So, the library was just a stepping stone to greater things. Huh, I should have figured it wasn’t her love of reading or people. But if the library board was a nothing position for her, then why was she so set upon going after me and my staff?”

  “Well, it could be that she was systematically trying to get rid of anyone who was in tight with the mayor,” he said.

  “I never considered the mayor and myself that close. I mean we’re cordial, but we’re not weekend barbecuing together or anything.”

  “No, but from the outside looking in, it’s easy to see that you and the library make him look very good. She probably didn’t want that happening while she was running against him,” he said.

  “Thanks, Milton.” Lindsey rose to her feet and squeezed his shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “Am I off the list now?” he asked. “I never even gave you my alibi.”

  “Oh, right,” she said. “Where were you when Olive was stabbed?”

  “Waiting for Ginny, rather Eugenia . . . um. . . Ms. Cole,” he said. “I was warming up the car for her since we were about to—”

  “No!” Lindsey held up her hands in a stop motion. “Details are not necessary.”

  “.
. . go home and have tea,” he finished.

  “Oh.”

  “Just so.”

  “I’m going to go back to work now,” she said.

  Lindsey pointed behind her and beat a hasty retreat to her office. Milton had been dating Eugenia, aka the lemon, for about a year, but Lindsey had a feeling that no matter how much time passed, she would never get used to it. Thus, she’d likely keep stepping in it if she wasn’t more careful.

  As she rounded the circulation desk, she couldn’t even look at Ms. Cole. How sweet that Milton called her Ginny. But sheesh, had she really thought Milton was going to disclose an intimate moment with the lemon? She was an idiot. Still, the idea mortified.

  She stepped into her office just as the phone rang. She glanced at the display. It was Robbie. Oh no. She wondered if Emma had actually locked him up and he was calling for bail.

  “Everything all right?” she asked, not even bothering to say hello.

  “It’s brilliant, actually,” he said. “I was on my way to see Emma but saw those harpies of Olive’s and decided to follow them instead. They are having a glass of wine at the Old Orchard Country Club. Come meet me and we can interrogate them.”

  “Amy, LeAnn and Kim?” Lindsey clarified.

  “The same,” he said. “And, frankly, they look quite conniving.”

  Lindsey glanced at the clock. The Old Orchard Country Club was on the outskirts of town, maybe a fifteen-minute bike ride from where she was. She did have to drop off the envelope of leave slips at the human resources department in the town hall, so it would just be a little, okay, a lot out of her way.

  “I’m on my way,” she said. “Stay out of sight until I get there.”

  “Don’t you worry. I’m just the chap in the hat, holding down the bar,” he said.

  Lindsey grabbed the interoffice envelope, her sneakers, her handbag and her jacket and dashed out the door.

  “Going to the town hall,” she called as she popped her head out of her office. “I have my phone. Call me if you need me.”